


It Can't Always Be Sunshine

by bouncymouse



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, Falling Out of Love, Ficlet, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27245422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bouncymouse/pseuds/bouncymouse
Summary: But now, he doesn’t love her anymore, and he stares at the ceiling and wonders how.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 12
Kudos: 25





	It Can't Always Be Sunshine

He doesn’t love her anymore.

It comes to him one night as he lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. Tifa’s asleep next to him and Cloud can hear her breathing softly. The blanket is drawn up around her ears and her nose is buried in her pillow. If he turns, he knows he’ll only see the top of her head, dark hair illuminated by the moonlight that slants through the gap in the curtains.

He doesn’t. If he does it might cement the feeling that’s been building in his gut for weeks. It scares him, threatening to destroy the calm he’s finally found, taking the routine he’s never had before now and tearing it apart.

She’s perfect, he thinks, everything he’s ever wanted and more. Beautiful, funny, caring, kind. Every facet of her life is approached with the same unflinching energy, her patience limitless. She loves the kids fiercely and tries to understand him when he can’t quite voice the way he feels. Every evening she flits behind the bar pouring drinks and telling jokes, and when she catches his eye across the crowded room her burgundy eyes crinkle at the corners and her smile brightens. That smile catches him when he’s falling and sets the world to rights.

It’s a dream he never dared dream. He remembers the first time he kissed her, the first of a million kisses, in the shadow of the Highwind with the threat of the one-winged angel hanging over them. A moment of brightness in the dark, seared into his memories by the heat of her in his arms.

But now, he doesn’t love her anymore, and he stares at the ceiling and wonders _how_. Tries his hardest to ignore the treacherous voice in his head. It’s relentless, insidious, repetitive like the heartbeat that strikes beneath his ribs.

A conversation. He sat on the outskirts and listened in, nodding occasionally as he picked awkwardly at the label on his slowly-warming bottle of beer. Three sheets to the wind, Cid and Barret reminisced, sharing fond memories of teenage exploits that made them roar with laughter, wiping tears from their eyes. The fights they started and lost, the women they loved... winding journeys across continents where they learnt who they were destined to be.

The fights, the women, the journeys… Cloud didn’t need to share his tales. They saw it all first-hand, lived it by his side. It was all tainted, stained black by the same broad strokes that caused his heart to ache when he woke, clammy and shaking, in the middle of the night. He doesn't have fond memories to look back on. He doesn't have _any_ memories.

Instead, he has nightmares, trapped in a glass tube under Nibelheim, cold and alone.

He never found himself. Never had his teenage voyage of discovery or considered his destiny before he was thrown down its path. He found Tifa again and clung to her, hoping it’d be enough. For a time, it was.

It isn’t now, and he doesn’t love her anymore. He stares at the ceiling and doesn’t know what to do.

Leaving again will break her heart and he can’t do it, can’t be the one to rip the smile from her face and stamp out the life in her eyes. She doesn’t deserve this. He tries his hardest to ignore the voice but she notices a little more every day, sees that he’s growing more distant, tries to draw him back.

He lets her, drifting towards her like a moth to the flame. At first, it’s enough to remind him, to shake lose the growing discontent. Only each time he returns to her, it’s a little longer before he kisses her. A little longer before he holds her in his arms. And each time he feels less whole, fragments of his manufactured persona chipping away, spiralling freely into the wind. It isn’t right anymore, and nothing he does can change it.

There’s something wrong in his head. There must be. On paper, this works, and everyone is rooting so hard for them. One perfect, happy thing to come out of the darkness.

If he leaves he’ll be letting them all down. If he stays…

So he stares at the ceiling and hates himself. He resents the steps that bought him here, the demons that stole his life and left him this broken. He hates the voice in the back of his head that keeps reminding him of the truth. And still, he can’t make himself feel the way he knows he should.

When he tries to write it down he fails, unable to spill the explanation he knows she needs across the paper. He’ll never make her understand. He baulks at the last minute, balls up his attempts and starts afresh. A simple note explaining that he has to leave, business to attend to, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back. He signs it with his name and leaves it on the bar, next to the till with the sticky drawer he never got around to fixing and a family portrait rendered in crayon that Marlene presented to them both one rainy Summer’s day when life was simpler.

When he finally leaves, he looks back and his heart breaks for the man he wants to be. Maybe he’ll find him. Maybe he’ll be able to reignite the flame that has slowly guttered and died. Maybe she’ll find somebody else, somebody who deserves her.

For now, that somebody isn’t him.

He understands this, as he closes the door one last time, fingers pressed to the weathered paintwork as though the familiar sensation could ground him, bring him back, remind him _why_ he wants to be there. It doesn’t. He doesn’t want it to be true, but it is.

He doesn’t love her anymore. He leaves.

She wakes alone and thinks nothing of it. She’s used to it now. Cloud’s downstairs, making coffee, straightening furniture. Maybe he’s fixing the till drawer, she thinks, smiling into her pillow. Things have been a little off recently but she’s determined to help him. They’ve overcome so much together already, this will be a piece of cake.

When she finds the note she tries to read it. By the third attempt, her fingers are trembling, her eyes hot as the words shiver and melt on the paper in her hands.

He’s wrong; she _does_ understand. She isn’t stupid. She scrubs the back of her hand across her eyes and tucks the note away. 

Life goes on, as always. It can’t always be sunshine. He doesn’t love her anymore, and though it takes time, she moves on.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my docs for a long, long time. It's kinda personal, but I've been here a couple of times and it's not a fun place to be. People change, unfortunately, and so do feelings. Sometimes it's better to walk away.


End file.
